Biographical Memoir of M. Philippe Pinel. 213 



be seconding the disease. Without doubt, on these principles, 

 the object of a physician is less to administer salutary remedies 

 than to prevent the taking of those that are hurtful ; and the 

 vulgar commonly expect from him more. It seems to them, that 

 studies carried on for so many ages, under so many circum- 

 stances, by so many persons, and which end in only teaching us 

 coolly to view the progress of a disease, and to class its species in 

 our systems, are efforts of mind to which their results are by no 

 means proportionate. We can hardly find fault with those com- 

 plaints, or refrain from hoping that, should we be able to ascend 

 to the origin of causes, it might be possible to oppose at once to 

 each disease some obstacle of a contrary nature. We can hardly, 

 therefore, avoid the fear, that, by thus attending to these noso- 

 graphical descriptions, we shall always remain at a great dis- 

 tance from the true end of the medical art, which, after all, is to 

 give relief. But, on the other hand, are we not obliged to con- 

 fess, that, even to the present day, all theoi-ies have been over- 

 turned by each other ? The coctions and the humours, the stric- 

 tum and the laxum, the fermentations of the acids and alkalies ; 

 the action of the rational soul, which seeks to preserve the body 

 without being perceived by it, and which is so often thwarted in 

 its anxiety ; the vital principle, that other kind of soul, which is 

 neither material nor spiritual, and on which is laid all that can- 

 not otherwise be explained, have successively moved off to the 

 region of chimeras. Will those ingenious systems be more for- 

 tunate that have been invented by some physicians of our own 

 day, the results of a new physiology, founded on a single prin- 

 ciple, and combined with so much ingenuity ? Time will soon 

 shew, but what it will teach us it is not in our power to foresee. 

 It had long been proposed to determine the efficacy of each 

 method, by tables, establishing, in numbers, the degree of pro- 

 bability of success, whether by the various treatments, or by ha- 

 ving no treatment at all. This idea would naturally be seized 

 by a geometer, who had become a physician ; and, in fact, it 

 strongly engaged M. Pinel's attention. In particular, he made 

 a happy application of it to the diseases of the mind, the class 

 of infirmities that had attracted his earliest notice, and which, 

 more strongly than any others, attest the wretchedness of man. 

 The two hospitals in which he was successively employed, exhi- 



